Seventeen HSPH faculty among most cited in their fields

Features

July 10, 2014 — Seventeen Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) faculty members—more faculty than at any other school of public health—have been included on a new list of the most highly cited researchers in the sciences and the social sciences, compiled by Thomson Reuters. Approximately 3,000 researchers worldwide earned this distinction.

Faculty members with primary appointments at HSPH on the list included Edward Giovannucci, professor of nutrition and epidemiology; Frank Hu, professor of nutrition and epidemiology; David Hunter, Vincent L. Gregory Professor in Cancer Prevention; Rafael Irizarry, professor of biostatistics; Ashish Jha, professor of health policy and management; Peter Kraft, professor of epidemiology; Meir Stampfer, professor of epidemiology and nutrition; Walter Willett, Fredrick John Stare Professor of Epidemiology and Nutrition; and David Williams, Florence Sprague Norman and Laura Smart Norman Professor of Public Health.

To develop its list, Thomson Reuters identified those articles that were most frequently cited in papers by others between 2002 and 2012. Those that ranked in the top 1% of citations for their subject field and year of publication were considered in determining the most influential researchers.

“These results reinforce the preeminence of HSPH among schools of public health with a strong research focus, consistent with our prior analyses of scientific productivity and impact across the entire faculty,” said David Hunter, dean for academic affairs and one of the researchers on the list. “This is all the more impressive as our faculty are represented across multiple categories in the listings, including agricultural sciences, clinical medicine, computer science, mathematics, molecular biology and genetics, psychiatry/psychology, and social sciences, reflecting the broad interdisciplinary scope of our school.”